A social network service is an online service, platform or site that focuses on building and reflecting social networks or social relations among people who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections. A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as by e-mail and instant messaging. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, pictures, posts, activities, events, and interests with people in their network.
Social networking sites (e.g., Facebook®) present to a particular user the messages posted by users in a social networking feed often referred to as an “activity stream” (e.g., Facebook's® news feed). These messages or “posts” can include text (e.g., comments, sub-comments and replies), audio, video images, etc.
The posting of a message to the activity stream may not be immediate. For example, a user may take some time in crafting a message to be posted to the activity stream, such as re-reading the drafted post for spelling/grammatical errors. The user may also be interrupted while crafting the message, such as by a telephone call. Prior to the user posting the message, the focus of the activity stream may change thereby negating the relevance of the unposted message. For example, the focus of an activity stream may change to a different topic of interest after a period of time elapses in response to new users posting messages to the activity stream. If the user is not aware of the change in the focus of the activity stream, the user may post a message that is irrelevant to the current topic of interest in the activity stream thereby causing confusion among users participating in the activity stream.
Unfortunately, there is not currently a means for providing the user an indication of the contextual relevance of the unposted message to the activity stream after a period of time elapses.